Anyone who ever saw a cowboy try to catch a cow using a rope knows that fetching an individual farm animal was always one of the toughest jobs on the farm. Approaching an individual farm animal is needed for various reasons; breeding and veterinary treatments are the most common ones. As the number of animals living on a farm increases, more data is collected on individual animals. Needs to approach or fetch specific animals are growing. Therefore, a reliable and cost-efficient solution to the problem of locating a specific animal is needed in the art.
In many prior disclosures, a location of animals is provided by an earth-orbiting satellite system. Such a system requires high power consumption from the device attached to the animal during communication and also requires line of sight between the animal and the satellites.
Other disclosures based on absolute pinpoint of an animal's location in a predefined coordinate system requires an expensive pre-installed array of antennas in the farm. The power consumption of such devices attached to the animal during communication is high because the device must transmit data for periods of minutes in order to enable accurate tracking.
Prior disclosures using RFID passive tags have been attached to the animal's ear or inserted into the stomach. Such devices do not contain a battery and theoretically have an endless lifespan. Such devices can be detected from only a very short range, such as, less than 1 m and can only find an animal confined to a very narrow space or passage.
A farmer or dairyman needs a system that can find an animal moving freely in a large confined area from a large distance of tens or even hundreds of meters. A transmitting device attached to the cow is an obvious choice in order to be practical and cost efficient. Such a device must have a very long life span because attaching the device to an animal is a very time consuming and tedious job.
What is currently needed in the art is a system and apparatus for identifying an individual animal in a group of animals in a paddock or pen by use of a device that consumes very low power. Such a device offers the advantage of being able to operate continuously for years using a small battery and thus requiring little or minimal battery replacement.